Check out Mini-Techmeme for simple mobiles or Techmeme Mobile for modern smartphones.
7:55 PM ET, December 5, 2008

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
RELATED:
Jim Dalrymple / Macworld:
Apple: 300 million iPhone apps downloaded  —  Apple on Friday said 300 million iPhone apps have been downloaded from its App Store since it opened in July.  —  The news comes in the form of two ads placed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  The ads highlight …
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Apple: 300 Million App Downloads, But Growth Flat (AAPL)
Discussion: Distorted-Loop.com
Erica Sadun / Ars Technica:
Hidden SDK features transform iPhone into TV gaming device  —  Look what we found  —  What do you do after uncovering undocumented SDK features?  I got in touch with Freeverse, makers of Moto Chaser, one of the top iPhone games in App Store.  After a few back and forth e-mails …
Nick Wingfield / Wall Street Journal:
Ballmer: Yahoo Deal Better If Done Soon  —  Q&A: Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu  —  After a nearly five month search, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it has found a new executive to lead its charge against Google Inc. in the online search and advertising business: Qi Lu, a technologist who was previously a top executive at Yahoo Inc.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Social Network Profile Costs Woman College Degree  —  Forget losing your job, apparently your MySpace or Facebook profile and photos can now cause you to lose your degree.  In what may be one of the most frightening rulings regarding social networks and privacy to date …
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
Did YouTube Just Turn On HD For Real?  —  After teasing us for a year with the option to watch “higher quality” videos that weren't quite high-def, it appears that YouTube is making the switch to HD, at least for some videos that have been uploaded in that quality.
Bonnie Cha / Crave: The gadget blog:
Verizon officially rolls out BlackBerry Storm firmware update  —  Earlier on Friday, we reported on rumors that Verizon Wireless would release a firmware update for the RIM BlackBerry Storm, but it's now official.  —  The carrier has begun rolling out the software upgrade via …
Brad Stone / Bits:
Pirates of the Amazon Abandon Ship  —  Earlier this week, two students from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, made headlines by releasing a plug-in for the Firefox Web browser that made it easy for people who were browsing books, music and movies on Amazon.com to download …
RELATED:
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Amazon Pirate Firefox Plugin Was Art Project …
Discussion: Threat Level, TechnoLlama and Techdirt
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider:
Google Plasters 75% More Ads On Search Pages...Desperately Seeking Clicks?  (GOOG)  —  So far in Q4, Google (GOOG) is serving 3.82 ads per keyword — about 52% more than it did during Q3.  During November, Google served 4.38 ads per keyword, a 75% increase over its Q3 average.
Kerry E. Grace / Wall Street Journal:
S&P Cuts Motorola Rating to Junk  —  Standard & Poor's Ratings Services cut its long-term corporate credit rating on Motorola Inc. into junk territory, saying operational challenges at the company's mobile devices unit will likely for some time.  —  That will result in lower profits …
RELATED:
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:   Motorola: It's Junk, Says S&P
Arielle Reinstein / Gmail Blog:
Get your Gmail stickers  —  Not too long ago, one of the Gmail engineers broke out her vinyl cutter and made some Gmail m-velope stickers.  Pretty soon, they were pasted to our desks, stuck on our laptops, and adorning the walls around the office.  Then other people started asking us about them — first it was just other Googlers.
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:
Qitera: Social Bookmarking for the Deep Web  —  Earlier this year, we featured a stealth startup called Qitera, which just launched publically today.  At its core, Qitera is a social bookmarking service, but unlike most of its competitors, Qitera can not only save a screenshot of the site …
Discussion: RotorBlog.com
David Rothman / TeleRead:
Gasp, MIGHT Sony have sold more e-readers than Amazon has?  And has Amazon bungled the ePub-creation question?  —  I should have picked up on this yesterday.  A CNN story says “more than a quarter million” Kindles have been sold.  Whose numbers are most helpful?  CNN or Forrester Research, which estimates 400,000?
Dan Moren / PC World:
Obama Sports White Earbuds, Doesn't Rock Zune  —  Our long national nightmare is over.  Despite rumors to the contrary, it's been confirmed that President-elect Barack Obama is not a user of Microsoft's Zune music player.  If you've been holding your breath you can let it out now.
Chris Preimesberger / eWeek:
Intel Developing Self-Powered Sensors for IT Devices  —  Resource Library:  —  Intel labs' overall goal: Finding creative ways to identify and harness new sources power for IT devices that don't pull from the electrical grid.  This represents the ultimate in green IT: devices that create their own power supplies.
Discussion: blogs.ft.com and PC World
Eric Krangel / Silicon Alley Insider:
Hate Vista?  Dell Now Charging $150 Extra for Windows XP (MSFT)  —  We know that many consumers just don't like Windows Vista.  But just how much more will people pay for a copy of the now nominally off-the-market Windows XP?  —  More and more.  In June, Dell (DELL) …
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
First Qualcomm Snapdragon netbook concept is a tablet  —  What do we have here?  Looks like some of the first pics I've seen of a netbook based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset have appeared at Silicon.com.  While the eight portraits likely represent more concept design rather than actual product, I like what I see.
Paulita David / Google Retail Blog:
Cyber Monday is the new Black...  Labels: 2008 Winter Holiday, Online Traffic Trends, Seasonality  —  ...Friday that is.  Fashionistas and Frugal Freddies alike hit the keyboards in record numbers this Cyber Monday.  According to comScore, the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday saw spending online up 13%.
Katie Hoffmann / Bloomberg:
Cisco, Dell Sales at Risk as Slump Fuels Gray Market  —  A A A  —  Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) — The remnants of businesses crushed by the economic slump now sit in Liquid Technology Inc.'s warehouse by the Hudson River in New York's Chelsea district.  —  Hundreds of servers, personal computers and routers …
Symbian Smart Phones World:
HOT: Next Nokia Full Touchscreen Device Leaked!!!  —  Wow, wow, wow, here it is, another hot Nokia leak!  Although Nokia has managed to hide the N97 from the public before its official release but promo poster of their next touch based device just appeared on the net and the endless saga …
MSDN Blogs:
Update on the Black Friday cashback outage  —  We want to apologize again for the outage on Friday and the inconvenience it has caused.  We deeply regret that many users were unable to access the Live Search cashback service.  —  We've been working diligently to correct the issues.
Rafat Ali / paidContent.org:
Industry Moves: NYT Promotes Denise Warren as GM of NYTimes.com  —  The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) has appointed Denise Warren, SVP and chief advertising officer of the company, as the GM of NYTimes.com, adding to her current duties.  She fills the position left vacant by Vivian Schiller, who joined NPR on Dec 1 as the new CEO.
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider and Jobwire
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft signs major deal with Dell for Live Search  —  Microsoft and Dell have signed a deal via which Dell will be shipping new PCs with the Live Search toolbar preinstalled, according to sources familiar with the arrangement between the two companies.  —  Microsoft officials declined …
Discussion: TechFlash, Microsoft Pri0 and Microsoft
Will Park / IntoMobile:
HTC MAX 4G reviewed, liked  —  The world's first GSM/WiMAX handset was launched not too long ago for use exclusively on Russia's Scartel-owned Yota WiMAX network.  The HTC MAX 4G sports GSM/EDGE and WiMAX hardware on top of the WiFi radio to ensure high-speed wireless connectivity …
Discussion: Boy Genius Report
 
 Archived Page Info: 
This is a snapshot of Techmeme at 7:55 PM ET, December 5, 2008.

View the current page or another snapshot:


 
 Techmeme Sponsor Posts: 
Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Sponsor Techmeme
 
 See Also: 
Techmeme: site main
Techmeme River: reverse chronological Techmeme
Techmeme Mobile: for phones
Techmeme Leaderboard: Techmeme's top sources
 
 Subscribe: 
Techmeme RSS feed
Techmeme on X
Techmeme on Mastodon
 
 
 More Items: 
Sindya Bhanoo / Industry Standard:
Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect: A battle for Internet mindshare
Discussion: Profy, Mashable! and louisgray.com
Heather Hopkins / Hitwise Intelligence:
Rise of Online Universities Continues in Recession
Don Reisinger / The Digital Home:
Times are tough, but tech companies don't need to suffer
Discussion: Download.com editors
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
The mouse turns 40: An interview with Paul Saffo on technology's past and future
InfoWorld:
Python 3.0 upgrade incompatible with earlier versions
Discussion: eWeek and The Register
 Earlier Items: 
Sam Oliver / AppleInsider:
A $99 Apple-branded cell phone is inevitable, analyst says
Discussion: Gizmodo
Jennifer Kingson / Bits:
A Credit Card Loses Its High-Tech Cred
Andy Greenberg / Forbes:
Second Life's Second Wind
Discussion: Virtual Worlds News
RGS / Random Good Stuff:
DIY iPhone Airplane Holder
Discussion: PC World, Engadget and Gizmodo
Tom Wright / Wall Street Journal:
Poorer Nations Go Online on Cellphones
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Amazon's Team of Rivals
Paul Graham:
Could VC be a Casualty of the Recesssion?
Discussion: TechFlash and HipMojo.com
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Lachlan Cartwright / The Ankler:
Sources: MSNBC renewed Rachel Maddow's contract early this fall, but with a pay cut; MSNBC bosses' plan to shake up daytime and weekend programming

Caitlin Huston / The Hollywood Reporter:
Internal memo: Hearst Magazines president announces layoffs as part of a decision to “reallocate resources” to “continue our focus on digital innovation”

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced she will leave the agency on January 20; she was the first woman to be confirmed to lead the agency

 
Sister Sites:

Mediagazer
 Top news and commentary for media professionals from all around the web
memeorandum
 What US political commentators are discussing online right now
WeSmirch
 The top celebrity news from all around the web on a single page